What is recorded here

Half a kilometre of unbroken grass and a sudden stone wound in the hillside. The chamber closed again after 1931, but the depression remains: a long shallow mouth on the summit where the living pried open what the dead had sealed. Fin Mac Cool may be legend, yet legend follows shape, and the shape is real.

Situated on the highest point at the S end of the N-S ridge of Sheebeg Hill. It is depicted on the 1835 and 1907 editions of the OS 6-inch map where it is described as ‘Fin Mc Cool’s Monument’. This is a grass- and scrub-covered flat-topped cairn of limestone boulders (diam. of base 38m; diam. of top 12.9m; H 5m). It has an oblong depression on the summit (L 12m; D 1m), the result of investigations in 1931 when a closed chamber of megalithic orthostats, containing two skeletons, was briefly opened (Irish Times, 7 January 1931; Gilligan 2015). It was reputed in the local folklore to be the burial place of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, which also records the 1931 investigation, for which see this web-page accessed on 06/04/2017: http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4649689/4647538 It is listed as a passage tomb (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1972, 143; Herity 1974, 279, Le 8). The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim' compiled by Michael J. Moore (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2003). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 23 September 2008 See linked document with details from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume III. Counties Galway, Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford, Westmeath, Laoighis, Offaly, Kildare, Cavan. (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1972).

A portal dolmen dating to the Neolithic period; it is significant as a surviving example of early megalithic funerary architecture in the region.

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